books tagged “german”

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  • Shirer, William L.: 20th Century Journey: A Memoir of a Life and the Times The Nightmare Years, 1930-1940
    20th Century Journey: A Memoir of a Life and the Times The Nightmare Years, 1930-1940
    by William L. Shirer
    ISBN 0553253336 (0-553-25333-6)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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  • The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
    by Mark Twain
    ISBN 0553211285 (0-553-21128-5)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Sparkling with mischief, jumping with youthful adventure, Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer is one of the most splendid re-creations of childhood in all of literature. It is a lighthearted romp, full of humor and warmth. It shares with its sequel, Huckleberry Finn, not only a set of unforgettable characters--Tom, Huck, Aunt Polly and others--but a profound understanding of humanity as well. Through such hilarious scenes as the famous fence-whitewashing incident, Twain gives a portrait--perceptive yet tender--of a humanity rendered foolish by his own aspirations and obsessions. Written as much for adults as for young boys and girls, Tom Sawyer is the work of a master storyteller performing in his shirt sleeves, using his best talents to everyone's delight. [via]

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  • Hobb, Robin: Assassin's Quest
    Assassin's Quest
    by Robin Hobb
    ISBN 0553106406 (0-553-10640-6)
    Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group

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  • Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Stories
    by Herman Melville
    ISBN 0553212745 (0-553-21274-5)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    If Melville had never written Moby Dick, his place in world literature would be assured by his short tales. "Billy Budd, Sailor," his last work, is the masterpiece in which he delivers the final summation in his "quarrel with God." It is a brilliant study of the tragic clash between social authority and individual freedom, human justice and abstract good. Melville also explores this theme in "Bartelby the Scrivener," his famous story about a Wall Street law clerk who takes passive resistance to a comicand ultimately disastrousextreme; and in "Benito Cereno," his dazzling account of oppression and rebellion on a nineteenth-century slave ship. Completing this collection of great tales are the eerie "The Encantados," the beautiful, romantic "The Piazza," and Melville's chilling science fiction parable, "The Bell-Tower." [via]

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  • Bleak House
    by Charles Dickens
    ISBN 0553212230 (0-553-21223-0)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Bleak House is a satirical look at the Byzantine legal system in London as it consumes the minds and talents of the greedy and nearly destroys the lives of innocents--a contemporary tale indeed. Dickens's tale takes us from the foggy dank streets of London and the maze of the Inns of Court to the peaceful countryside of England. Likewise, the characters run from murderous villains to virtuous girls, from a devoted lover to a "fallen woman," all of whom are affected by a legal suit in which there will, of course, be no winner. The first-person narrative related by the orphan Esther is particularly sweet. The articulate reading by the acclaimed British actor Paul Scofield, whose distinctive broad English accent lends just the right degree of sonority and humor to the text, brings out the color in this classic social commentary disguised as a Victorian drama. However, to abridge Dickens is, well, a Dickensian task, the results of which make for a story in which the author's convoluted plot lines and twists of fate play out in what seems to be a fast-forward format. Listeners must pay close attention in order to keep up with the multiple narratives and cast of curious characters, including the memorable Inspector Bucket and Mr. Guppy. Fortunately, the publisher provides a partial list of characters on the inside jacket. (Running time: 3 hours; 2 cassettes) [via]

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  • The Book of Five Rings: (Gorin No Sho)
    by Musashi Miyamoto, Copyright Paperback Collection (Library of Congress)
    ISBN 055322509X (0-553-22509-X)
    Hardcover, Bantam

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    Here is one of the most insightful texts on the subtle arts of confrontation and victory to emerge from Asian culture. Written not only for martial artists but for leaders in all professions, the book analyzes the process of struggle and mastery over conflict that underlies every level of human interaction. The Book of Five Rings which has become a well-known classic among American business people, studied for its insights into the Japanese approach to business strategywas composed in 1643 by the famed duelist and undefeated samurai Miyamoto Musashi. Unlike previous editions of The Book of Five Rings , Thomas Cleary's is an accessible translation, free of jargon, with an introduction that presents the spiritual background of the warrior tradition. Along with Musashi's text, Cleary translates another important Japanese classic on leadership and strategy: The Book of Family Traditions on the Art of War by Yagyu Munenori, which highlights the ethical and spiritual insights of Taoism and Zen as they apply to the way of the warrior. [via]

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  • Brightness Reef
    by David Brin
    ISBN 0553100343 (0-553-10034-3)
    Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group

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    Millennia ago the Five Galaxies decreed the planet Jijo off limits. But in the last thousand years six races have begun resettling Jijo, embracing a pre-industrial life to hide their existence from the Galactics. Overcoming their differences, the Six have built a society based on mutual tolerance for one another and respect for the planet they live on. But that has all changed with an event the Six have feared for hundreds of years: the arrival of an outside ship. Author David Brin has returned to his popular Uplift universe in this, the first book of a new trilogy. [via]

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  • The Brothers Karamazov: Library Edition
    by Fyodor Dostoevsky
    ISBN 0553212168 (0-553-21216-8)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    In 1880 Dostoevsky completed The Brothers Karamazov, the literary effort for which he had been preparing all his life. Compelling, profound, complex, it is the story of a patricide and of the four sons who each had a motive for murder: Dmitry, the sensualist, Ivan, the intellectual; Alyosha, the mystic; and twisted, cunning Smerdyakov, the bastard child. Frequently lurid, nightmarish, always brilliant, the novel plunges the reader into a sordid love triangle, a pathological obsession, and a gripping courtroom drama. But throughout the whole, Dostoevsky searhes for the truth--about man, about life, about the existence of God. A terrifying answer to man's eternal questions, this monumental work remains the crowning achievement of perhaps the finest novelist of all time. [via]

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  • Candide
    by Francois M. Voltaire
    ISBN 0553211668 (0-553-21166-8)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Political satire doesn't age well, but occasionally a diatribe contains enough art and universal mirth to survive long after its timeliness has passed. Candide is such a book. Penned by that Renaissance man of the Enlightenment, Voltaire, Candide is steeped in the political and philosophical controversies of the 1750s. But for the general reader, the novel's driving principle is clear enough: the idea (endemic in Voltaire's day) that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and apparent folly, misery and strife are actually harbingers of a greater good we cannot perceive, is hogwash.

    Telling the tale of the good-natured but star-crossed Candide (think Mr. Magoo armed with deadly force), as he travels the world struggling to be reunited with his love, Lady Cunegonde, the novel smashes such ill-conceived optimism to splinters. Candide's tutor, Dr. Pangloss, is steadfast in his philosophical good cheer, in the face of more and more fantastic misfortune; Candide's other companions always supply good sense in the nick of time. Still, as he demolishes optimism, Voltaire pays tribute to human resilience, and in doing so gives the book a pleasant indomitability common to farce. Says one character, a princess turned one-buttocked hag by unkind Fate: "I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our most melancholy propensities; for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one's very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?"--Michael Gerber [via]

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  • Davidson, Diane Mott: The Cereal Murders
    The Cereal Murders
    by Diane Mott Davidson
    ISBN 0553095153 (0-553-09515-3)
    Hardcover, Bantam Books

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  • Cider House Rules
    by John Irving
    ISBN 0553258001 (0-553-25800-1)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    First published in 1985, The Cider House Rules is John Irving's sixth novel. Set in rural Maine in the first half of this century, it tells the story of Dr. Wilbur Larch--saint and obstetrician, founder and director of the orphanage in the town of St. Cloud's, ether addict and abortionist. It is also the story of Dr. Larch's favorite orphan, Homer Wells, who is never adopted. [via]

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  • The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm
    by Jack D. Zipes, Johnny Gruelle, Jacob W. Grimm
    ISBN 0553212516 (0-553-21251-6)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    Enchanting, brimming with the wonder and magic of  Once Upon A Time, the fairy tales  of the Brothers Grimm are the special stories of  childhood that stay with us throughout our lives.  But most Americans know them only secondhand, in  adaptations that greatly reduce the tales' power to  touch our emotions and intrigue our imaginations.  Now, in the most comprehensive translation to  date, here are the classic fairy tales as the Bothers  Grimm intended them to be--rich, stark, spiced  with humor and violence, resonant with the rhythms of  folklore and song. Volume II contains 142  unabridged tales, including such bedtime favorites as  "Snow White and Rose Red" and "The  Worn-Out Dancing Shoes," as well as 32 little-known  tales that the Brothers Grimm omitted during the  course of their many revisions. These wonderful  tales of life, passion, and make-believe appeal not  only to children--who unabashedly love them--but  to readers of any age. [via]

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  • Heyer, Georgette: The Convenient Marriage
    The Convenient Marriage
    by Georgette Heyer
    ISBN 0553227629 (0-553-22762-9)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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  • Count of Monte Cristo
    by Alexandre Dumas, Lowell Blair
    ISBN 0553213504 (0-553-21350-4)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. Edmund Dantes, unjustly convicted of aiding the exiled Napoleon, escapes after 14 years of imprisonment and seeks his revenge in Paris. [via]

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  • Cyrano De Bergerac
    by Edmond Rostand
    ISBN 0553213601 (0-553-21360-1)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Paperback [via]

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  • Webster, Jean: Daddy Long-Legs
    Daddy Long-Legs
    by Jean Webster
    ISBN 0553209086 (0-553-20908-6)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. [via]

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  • Dark Force Rising
    by Timothy Zahn
    ISBN 0553085743 (0-553-08574-3)
    Hardcover, Bantam Books

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    With Luke trapped by the Dark Jedi, Han pursuing a missing battle fleet, and Princess Leia occupied with influencing an alien race heretofore loyal to Thrawn, the fate of the Republic is threatened. 250,000 first printing. [via]

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  • The Death and Life of Superman
    by Roger Stern
    ISBN 055309582X (0-553-09582-X)
    Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group

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    "Superman-dead!"--The Daily  Planet. On November 18, 1992, news of  Superman's death shocked the world as the legendary  Man of steel was killed defending Metropolis from  the monster called Doomsday. Here at last is the  dramatic story behind the best-selling comic book  of all time: the fates of Clark Kent, Lois Lane,  Ma and Pa Kent, the Justice League, and the reign  of the four super-beings who mysteriously appeared  after Superman's funeral, each claiming to be the  real Last Son of Krypton. And finally, here is  the complete incredible story of Superman's  triumphant retum! In this thrilling novel, Roger Stern, a  veteran writer of Action  Comics, chronicles the most amazing comeback in comic  book history--told with more gripping detail and  background than ever before.


    From the Paperback edition. [via]

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  • The Death of Ivan Ilyich
    by Leo Tolstoy
    ISBN 0553210351 (0-553-21035-1)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Hailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his death so much as a passing thought. But one day death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise he is brought face to face with his own mortality. How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth? This short novel was the artistic culmination of a profound spiritual crisis in Tolstoy's life, a nine-year period following the publication of Anna Karenina during which he wrote not a word of fiction. A thoroughly absorbing and, at times, terrifying glimpse into the abyss of death, it is also a strong testament to the possibility of finding spiritual salvation. [via]

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  • The Doomsday Book
    by Connie Willis
    ISBN 0553081314 (0-553-08131-4)
    Hardcover, Bantam Books

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    Connie Willis labored five years on this story of a history student in 2048 who is transported to an English village in the 14th century. The student arrives mistakenly on the eve of the onset of the Black Plague. Her dealings with a family of "contemps" in 1348 and with her historian cohorts lead to complications as the book unfolds into a surprisingly dark, deep conclusion. The book, which won Hugo and Nebula Awards, draws upon Willis' understanding of the universalities of human nature to explore the ageless issues of evil, suffering and the indomitable will of the human spirit. [via]

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  • Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
    by Robert Louis Stevenson
    ISBN 055321277X (0-553-21277-X)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    From the Back Cover: "Robert Louis Stevenson originally wrote 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' as a 'shilling shocker.' He then burned the draft, and, upon his wife's advice, rewrote it as the darkly complex tale it is today. Stark, skillfully woven, this fascinating novel explores the curious turnings of human character through the strange case of Dr. Jekyll, a kindly scientist who by night takes on his stunted evil self. Mr. Hyde. Anticipating modern psychology, 'Jekyll and Hyde' is a brilliantly original study of man's dual nature - as well as an immortal tale of suspense and terror..." [via]

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  • Dracula
    by Bram Stoker
    ISBN 0553212710 (0-553-21271-0)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    One of the most popular stories ever told, dracula (1897) has been re-created for the stage and screen hundreds of times in the last century. Yet it is essentially a victorian saga, an awesome tale of thrillingly bloodthirsty vampire whose nocturnal atrocities reflect the dark underside of a supremely moralistic age. Above all, dracula is a quintessential story of suspense and horror, boasting one of the most terrifying characters in literature: centuries-old count dracula, whose diabolical passions prey upon the innocent, the helpless, the beautiful. Bram stoker, who was also the manager of the famous actor sir henry irving, wrote seventeen novels. Dracula remains his most celebrated and enduring work -- even today this gothic masterpiece has lost none of the spine-tingling impact that makes it a classic of the genre [via]

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  • Dragondrums
    by Anne McCaffrey
    ISBN 0553258559 (0-553-25855-9)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    When his boy soprano voice begins to change, Piemur is drafted by Masterharper Robinton to help with political work and is sent on missions that lead him into unusual and sometimes dangerous adventures. [via]

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  • Dragonsong
    by Anne McCaffrey
    ISBN 0553258524 (0-553-25852-4)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Anne McCaffrey's best-selling Harper Hall Trilogy  is a wonder-filled classic of the  imagination. Dragonsong, the first volume in the  series, is the enchanting tale of how Menolly of  Half Circle Hold became Pern's first female Harper,  and rediscovered the legendary fire lizards who  helped to save her world. [via]

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  • Dubliners
    by James Joyce
    ISBN 0553213806 (0-553-21380-6)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    James Joyce has been hailed as one of the great literary rebels of our time. He rebelled against social and literary conventions, against Catholicism, and against Dublin, the city at the center of this magnificent collection of stories. In Dubliners, Joyce paints vivid portraits of the denizens of the city of his birth, from the young boy encountering death in the fist story, "The Sisters," to the middle-aged Gabriel of the haunting final story, "The Dead." This collection is both unflinchingly realistic portrait of "dear dirty Dublin" and, as Joyce himself explained, a window through which his countrymen could get "one good look at themselves." [via]

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  • Dune: House Atreides
    by Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson, Frank Herbert
    ISBN 0553110616 (0-553-11061-6)
    Hardcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    THE EPIC PREQUEL TO DUNE


    "DUNE: HOUSE ATREIDES is a terrific prequel, but it is also a first-rate adventure on its own. Frank Herbert would surely be delighted and proud of this continuation of his vision."Dean Koontz


    Frank Herbert's Dune chronicles became an enduring classic and the most popular science fiction series of all time. Working from recently discovered files left by his father, Brian Herbert and best-selling novelist Kevin J. Anderson bring us Dune: House Atreides, the prequel, which captures all the complexity and grand themes of the original work while weaving a new tapestry of great passion and momentous destiny into a saga that expands the tale written by Frank Herbert more than thirty years ago.


    Complex, brilliant, and prophetic, Frank Herbert's award-winning Dune chronicles captured the imaginations of millions of readers worldwideand transformed their perception of what the future could be. By his death in 1986, Frank Herbert had completed six novels in the Dune series. But much of his visionvast, sprawling, and multilayeredremained unwritten. Now, working from recently discovered files left by his father, Brian Herbert and bestselling novelist Kevin J. Anderson collaborate on a new novel, the first volume in the prequel to Dunewhere we step onto planet Arrakis...decades before Dune's hero, Paul Atreides, walks its sands. 
    Beginning nearly four decades before Dune, House Atreides introduces pivotal characters, alliances, base treacheries, and bright hopes that form the foundation of Dune. On the planet Arrakis, an aging tyrant sits on the Golden Lion Throne and rules all of the known universe, while his son grows dangerously impatient for the crown. A quasi-religious order of black-robed women move their secret breeding program one momentous step closer to creating a god-child they call the Kwisatz Haderach. And a minor family among the nobility, House Atreides, chooses a course of honor that will bring it to destruction at the hands of its mortal enemy, House Harkonnenor take it to new heights of power.

    Here is the rich and complex world that Frank Herbert created in his classic series, in the time leading up to the momentous events of Dune. As Emperor Elrood's son Shaddam plots a subtle regicide, young Leto Atreides leaves his lush, water-rich planet for a year's education on the mechanized world of Ix; a planetologist named Pardot Kynes is dispatched by the Emperor to the desert planet Arrakis, or Dune, to discover the secrets of the addictive spice known as melange; and the eight-year-old slave Duncan Idaho is hunted by his cruel masters in a terrifying game from which he vows escape and vengeance. But none can envision the fate in store for them: one that will make them renegadesand shapers of history.

    Covering the decade when Shaddam wins his throne, the teenager Leo Atreides becomes unexpectedly the rule of House Atreides, and Pardot Kynes uncovers one of the planet Dune's greatest secrets, House Atreides stands next to Dune in its power and scope. While this new novel solves some of Dune's most baffling mysteries, it presents new puzzles springing from the sands where one day Paul Muad'Dib Atreides will walk. But now, in the years before Paul's birth, an unforgettable new epic begins. Fans of the Dune chronicles will relish the opportunity to return to the rich and exotic universe created by Frank Herbert, while new readers will be introduced to an incomparable imaginationa future where the fate of the entire cosmos is at stake.



    The Story Behind Dune: House Atreides
    by Brian Herbert

    When my father first sat down with me to go over one of my manuscripts, he told me that he couldn't teach me how to write; instead, he would teach me what he called "the care and feeding of editors": how to make manuscripts look presentable so that they wouldn't be tossed into a slush pile, unread. He then proceeded to teach me how to write. I remember many instances when we would brainstorm ideas and dissect my own novel manuscripts. He taught me how to develop worlds, to create characters, to invent action...and to describe all of it. We collaborated on the novel Man of Two Worlds, Frank Herbert's last published work, and even talked about working together on a new Dune novel, but we'd set no date, had established no specific details or direction.

    That novel was not to be. When my father died in 1986, he left several projects unfinished. For years there were rumors that I would write another novel set in my father's Dune universe, a sequel to the sixth book in the series, Chapterhouse: Dune. Prominent writers approached me with offers of collaboration, but in tossing ideas around with them I couldn't visualize the project coming to fruition. They were excellent writers, but in combination with them I didn't feel the necessary synergy for such a monumental task. Along with Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and a handful of other works, Dune stood as one of the greatest creative achievements of all time, and arguably the greatest example of science fiction world-building in the history of literature. For the sake of my father's legacy, I could not select the wrong person.

    It wasn't until I began conversation with Kevin J. Anderson, a critically acclaimed and internationally best-selling author, that I found someone whose enthusiasm and passion for the Dune universe match my own. Much of Kevin's writing had been influenced heavily by the work of Frank Herbert. I read everything I could get my hands on that Kevin had written, and did more checking on him. It soon became clear that he was a brilliant writer and that his reputation was sterling. We hit it off immediately, both on a personal and professional level; new story ideas fairly exploded from our minds and together, we found the energy to tackle such a massive project.

    Frank Herbert had left behind literally thousands of pages of notes, ideas, and sketches. Of all the possible Dune stories we could tell, Kevin and I chose to concentrate on an immediate prequel, to go back to the heart of Dune's readership, the core characters and situations that had made this the best-selling science fiction novel of all time: The love story of Duke Leto and Lady Jessica; their first battle with Baron Harkonnen; the quest of the planetologist Kynes, sent to the desert world of Dune to investigate the precious spice and the sandworms and the Fremen...and the power-hungry Crown Prince Shaddam, who would do anything to secure the Imperial throne.

    The Dune universe is a vast canvas, with ample opportunity for many stories, but we have chosen to start here, featuring the characters with whom all Dune fans are familiar. Dune: House Atreides is a personal story that means a great deal to us; we hope booksellers and readers alike will feel the same way.

    Signed,
    Brian Herbert [via]

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  • Dune: House Corrino
    by Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson, Frank Herbert
    ISBN 0553110845 (0-553-11084-5)
    Hardcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    The triumphant conclusion to the blockbuster trilogy that made science fiction history!

    In Dune: House Corrino Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson bring us the magnificent final chapter in the unforgettable saga begun in Dune: House Atreides and continued in Dune: House Harkonnen.

    Here nobles and commoners, soldiers and slaves, wives and courtesans shape the amazing destiny of a tumultuous universe. An epic saga of love and war, crime and politics, religion and revolution, this magnificent novel is a fitting conclusion to a great science fiction trilogy ... and an invaluable addition to the thrilling world of Frank Herberts immortal Dune.

    Dune: House Corrino

    Fearful of losing his precarious hold on the Golden Lion Throne, Shaddam IV, Emperor of a Million Worlds, has devised a radical scheme to develop an alternative to melange, the addictive spice that binds the Imperium together and that can be found only on the desert world of Dune.

    In subterranean labs on the machine planet Ix, cruel Tleilaxu overlords use slaves and prisoners as part of a horrific plan to manufacture a synthetic form of melange known as amal. If amal can supplant the spice from Dune, it will give Shaddam what he seeks: absolute power.

    But Duke Leto Atreides, grief-stricken yet unbowed by the tragic death of his son Victor, determined to restore the honor and prestige of his House, has his own plans for Ix.

    He will free the Ixians from their oppressive conquerors and restore his friend Prince Rhombur, injured scion of the disgraced House Vernius, to his rightful place as Ixian ruler. It is a bold and risky venture, for House Atreides has limited military resources and many ruthless enemies, including the sadistic Baron Harkonnen, despotic master of Dune.

    Meanwhile, Duke Letos consort, the beautiful Lady Jessica, obeying the orders of her superiors in the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood, has conceived a child that the Sisterhood intends to be the penultimate step in the creation of an all-powerful being. Yet what the Sisterhood doesnt know is that the child Jessica is carrying is not the girl they are expecting, but a boy.

    Jessicas act of disobedience is an act of love  her attempt to provide her Duke with a male heir to House Atreides  but an act that, when discovered, could kill both mother and baby.

    Like the Bene Gesserit, Shaddam Corrino is also concerned with making a plan for the future  securing his legacy. Blinded by his need for power, the Emperor will launch a plot against Dune, the only natural source of true spice. If he succeeds, his madness will result in a cataclysmic tragedy not even he foresees: the end of space travel, the Imperium, and civilization itself.

    With Duke Leto and other renegades and revolutionaries fighting to stem the tide of darkness that threatens to engulf their universe, the stage is set for a showdown unlike any seen before. [via]

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  • Herbert, Brian: Dune Pt. 2: House Harkonnen
    Dune Pt. 2: House Harkonnen
    by Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson
    ISBN 0553110721 (0-553-11072-1)
    Hardcover, Bantam Books

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  • Steinbeck, John: East of Eden: An Easy Guide to Car Maintenance And Repair
    East of Eden: An Easy Guide to Car Maintenance And Repair
    by John Steinbeck
    ISBN 0553129090 (0-553-12909-0)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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  • Emma
    by Jane Austen
    ISBN 0553212737 (0-553-21273-7)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    Of all Jane Austen's heroines, Emma Woodhouse is the most flawed, the most infuriating, and, in the end, the most endearing. Pride and Prejudice's Lizzie Bennet has more wit and sparkle; Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey more imagination; and Sense and Sensibility's Elinor Dashwood certainly more sense--but Emma is lovable precisely because she is so imperfect. Austen only completed six novels in her lifetime, of which five feature young women whose chances for making a good marriage depend greatly on financial issues, and whose prospects if they fail are rather grim. Emma is the exception: "Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her." One may be tempted to wonder what Austen could possibly find to say about so fortunate a character. The answer is, quite a lot.

    For Emma, raised to think well of herself, has such a high opinion of her own worth that it blinds her to the opinions of others. The story revolves around a comedy of errors: Emma befriends Harriet Smith, a young woman of unknown parentage, and attempts to remake her in her own image. Ignoring the gaping difference in their respective fortunes and stations in life, Emma convinces herself and her friend that Harriet should look as high as Emma herself might for a husband--and she zeroes in on an ambitious vicar as the perfect match. At the same time, she reads too much into a flirtation with Frank Churchill, the newly arrived son of family friends, and thoughtlessly starts a rumor about poor but beautiful Jane Fairfax, the beloved niece of two genteelly impoverished elderly ladies in the village. As Emma's fantastically misguided schemes threaten to surge out of control, the voice of reason is provided by Mr. Knightly, the Woodhouse's longtime friend and neighbor. Though Austen herself described Emma as "a heroine whom no one but myself will much like," she endowed her creation with enough charm to see her through her most egregious behavior, and the saving grace of being able to learn from her mistakes. By the end of the novel Harriet, Frank, and Jane are all properly accounted for, Emma is wiser (though certainly not sadder), and the reader has had the satisfaction of enjoying Jane Austen at the height of her powers. --Alix Wilber [via]

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  • Endymion
    by Dan Simmons
    ISBN 0553100203 (0-553-10020-3)
    Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group

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    Book summary:

    Two hundred and seventy-four years after the fall of the WorldWeb in Fall of Hyperion, Raoul Endymion is sent on a quest. Retrieving Aenea from the Sphinx before the Church troops reach her is only the beginning. With help from a blue-skinned android named A. Bettik, Raoul and Aenea travel the river Tethys, pursued by Father Captain Frederico DeSoya, an influential warrior-priest and his troops. The shrike continues to make enigmatic appearances, and while many questions were raised in Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion, still more are raised here. Raoul's quest will continue in at least one more volume.

    This series has something for everyone: Simmons's prose is imaginative and stylistically varied; point-of-view and time-scale are handled with finesse; the action is always gripping; the device of Old Earth allows Simmons to work in entertaining references to present-day culture; and the technology raises bizarre questions of ethics and morality in its use of repeated death and resurrection. [via]

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  • Frankenstein
    by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
    ISBN 0553212478 (0-553-21247-8)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    Frankenstein, loved by many decades of readers and praised by such eminent literary critics as Harold Bloom, seems hardly to need a recommendation. If you haven't read it recently, though, you may not remember the sweeping force of the prose, the grotesque, surreal imagery, and the multilayered doppelgänger themes of Mary Shelley's masterpiece. As fantasy writer Jane Yolen writes of this (the reviewer's favorite) edition, "The strong black and whites of the main text [illustrations] are dark and brooding, with unremitting shadows and stark contrasts. But the central conversation with the monster--who owes nothing to the overused movie image & but is rather the novel's charnel-house composite--is where [Barry] Moser's illustrations show their greatest power ... The viewer can all but smell the powerful stench of the monster's breath as its words spill out across the page. Strong book-making for one of the world's strongest and most remarkable books." Includes an illuminating afterword by Joyce Carol Oates. [via]

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  • A Game of Thrones
    by George R.R. Martin
    ISBN 0553103547 (0-553-10354-7)
    Hardcover, Spectra

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    Book summary:

    Readers of epic fantasy series are: (1) patient--they are left in suspense between each volume, (2) persistent--they reread or at least review the previous book(s) when a new installment comes out, (3) strong--these 700-page doorstoppers are heavy, and (4) mentally agile--they follow a host of characters through a myriad of subplots. In A Game of Thrones, the first book of a projected six, George R.R. Martin rewards readers with a vividly real world, well-drawn characters, complex but coherent plotting, and beautifully constructed prose, which Locus called "well above the norms of the genre."

    Martin's Seven Kingdoms resemble England during the Wars of the Roses, with the Stark and Lannister families standing in for the Yorks and Lancasters. The story of these two families and their struggle to control the Iron Throne dominates the foreground; in the background is a huge, ancient wall marking the northern border, beyond which barbarians, ice vampires, and direwolves menace the south as years-long winter advances. Abroad, a dragon princess lives among horse nomads and dreams of fiery reconquest.

    There is much bloodshed, cruelty, and death, but A Game of Thrones is nevertheless compelling; it garnered a Nebula nomination and won the 1996 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel. So, on to A Clash of Kings! --Nona Vero [via]

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  • Garrett, Randall: The Glass of Dyskornis
    The Glass of Dyskornis
    by Randall Garrett
    ISBN 0553252305 (0-553-25230-5)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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  • Ceram, C.W.: Gods, Graves and Scholars
    Gods, Graves and Scholars
    by C.W. Ceram
    ISBN 0553227890 (0-553-22789-0)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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  • Great Expectations
    by Charles Dickens
    ISBN 0553213423 (0-553-21342-3)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    In the marshy mists of a village churchyard, a  tiny orphan boy named Pip is suddenly terrified by a  shivering, limping convict on the run. Years  later, a supremely arrogant young Pip boards the coach  to London where, by the grace of a mysterious  benefactor, he will join the ranks of the idle rich  and "become a gentleman." Finally, in the  luminous mists of the village at evening, Pip the  man meets Estella, his dazzingly beautiful  tormentor, in a ruined garden--and lays to rest all the  heartaches and illusions that his "great  expectations" have brought upon him. Dickens's  biographer, Edgar H. Johnson, has said that--except  for the author's last-minute tampering with his  original ending--Great Expectations  is "the most perfectly constructed and  perfectly written of all Dickens's works." In John  Irving's Introduction to this edition, the  novelist takes the view that Dickens's revised ending is  "far more that mirror of the quality of trust in  the novel as a whole." Both versions of the  ending are printed here. [via]

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  • The Guns of August
    by Barbara W. Tuchman
    ISBN 0553254014 (0-553-25401-4)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barbara Tuchman has brought to life again the people and events that led up to World War I. With attention to fascinating detail, and an intense knowledge of her subject and its characters, Ms. Tuchman reveals, for the first time, just how the war started, why, and why it could have been stopped but wasn't. A classic historical survey of a time and a people we all need to know more about, The Guns of August will not be forgotten.
    [via]

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  • Hamlet
    by William Shakespeare, David M. Bevington
    ISBN 0553212923 (0-553-21292-3)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    Undoubtedly the most famous of all of Shakespeare's plays, Hamlet remains one of the most enduring but also enigmatic pieces of western literature. The story of Hamlet, the young Prince of Denmark, his tortured relationship with his mother, and his quest to avenge his father's murder at the hand of his brother Claudius has fascinated writers and audiences ever since it was written around 1600.

    For many years interest focused on both Hamlet's inability to avenge his father's death, claiming that "the native hue of resolution / Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought", and, according to none other than Freud, his oedipal fixation with his mother. However, more recently critics have turned their attention to Hamlet's bold theatrical self-reflexivity (most famously reflected in the performance of "The Mousetrap"), its fascination with issues of theology and Renaissance humanism, and its dense, complex poetic language. What is so remarkable about the play is the way in which it tends to uncannily reflect the concerns of different epochs. As a result, Hamlet has been at different moments defined as a romantic rebel, an angst-ridden existentialist, a paralysed intellectual and an ambivalent New Man. Whatever subsequent generations make of Hamlet, they are unlikely to exhaust the possibilities of this most extraordinary play. --Jerry Brotton [via]

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  • Weis, Margaret: The Hand of Chaos
    The Hand of Chaos
    by Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman
    ISBN 0553093770 (0-553-09377-0)
    Hardcover, Bantam Books

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  • Forsyth, Frederick: Icon
    Icon
    by Frederick Forsyth
    ISBN 055309128X (0-553-09128-X)
    Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group

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  • George, Elizabeth: In the Presence of the Enemy
    In the Presence of the Enemy
    by Elizabeth George
    ISBN 0553092650 (0-553-09265-0)
    Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group

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  • Infinity's Shore
    by David Brin
    ISBN 0553101730 (0-553-10173-0)
    Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group

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    Book summary:

    This second volume in David Brin's new Uplift trilogy is an epic tale that artfully combines dozens of unique characters and their individual stories. The planet Jijo, which has been settled by six separate races despite a decree that it remain barren for a million years, is about to change. The exploration ship Streaker, on the run since discovering the secrets of a two-billion-year-old derelict fleet, has arrived with virtually the entire universe in pursuit. Overnight the peaceful, technologically backwards Jijoan society erupts into civil war, creating a chaotic tapestry of grief, sorrow, joy, love and, ultimately, hope. [via]

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  • Weis, Margaret: Into the Labyrinth
    Into the Labyrinth
    by Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman
    ISBN 0553095390 (0-553-09539-0)
    Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group

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  • Werner, Herbert A.: Iron Coffins
    Iron Coffins
    by Herbert A. Werner
    ISBN 0553233475 (0-553-23347-5)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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  • Ivanhoe
    by Walter Scott
    ISBN 0553213261 (0-553-21326-1)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Ivanhoe brings alive 12th-century England and its people: Ivanhoe, the disinherited knight, his fair lady, Rowena, Richard the Lion Hearted and Robin Hood. Through them the past of England comes alive--a past of crusades, chivalry and courtly love. [via]

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  • Jane Eyre
    by Charlotte Bronte, Kathy Mitchell
    ISBN 0553211404 (0-553-21140-4)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Charlotte Brontë's impassioned novel is the love story of Jane Eyre, a plain yet spirited governess, and her employer, the arrogant, brooding Mr. Rochester. Published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell, the book heralded a new kind of heroine-one whose virtuous integrity, keen intellect, and tireless perseverance broke through class barriers to win equal stature with the man she loved. Hailed by William Makepeace Thackeray as "the masterwork of a great genius," Jane Eyre is still regarded, over a century later, as one of the finest novels in English literature. [via]

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  • A Journey to the Center of the Earth
    by Jules Verne
    ISBN 0553213970 (0-553-21397-0)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Written almost a century before the daring flights of the astronauts, Jules Vernes prophetic novel of mans race to the stars is a classic adventure tale enlivened by broad satire and scientific acumen.

    When the members of the elite Baltimore Gun Club find themselves lacking any urgent assignments at the close of the Civil War, their president, Impey Barbicane, proposes that they build a gun big enough to launch a rocket to the moon. But when Barbicanes adversary places a huge wager that the project will fail and a daring volunteer elevates the mission to a manned flight, one mans dream turns into an international space race.

    A story of rip-roaring action, humor, and wild imagination, From the Earth to the Moon is as uncanny in its accuracy and as filled with authentic detail and startling immediacy as Vernes timeless masterpieces 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Around the World in Eighty Days.

    [via]

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  • Bradley, Marion Zimmer: Lady of the Trillium
    Lady of the Trillium
    by Marion Zimmer Bradley
    ISBN 0553092995 (0-553-09299-5)
    Hardcover, Bantam Books

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  • Bradbury, Ray: Long After Midnight
    Long After Midnight
    by Ray Bradbury
    ISBN 0553242393 (0-553-24239-3)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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  • Macbeth
    by William Shakespeare
    ISBN 0553212982 (0-553-21298-2)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    No dramatist has ever seen with more frightening clarity into the heart and mind of a murderer than has Shakespeare in this compelling tragedy of evil. Taunted into asserting his "masculinity" by his ambitious wife, Macbeth chooses to embrace the Weird Sisters' prophecy and kill his king-and thus, seals his own doom. Fast-moving and bloody, this drama has the extraordinary energy that derives from a brilliant plot replete with treachery and murder, and from Shakespeare's compelling portrait of the ultimate battle between a mind and its own guilt.Each Edition Includes: Comprehensive explanatory notes Vivid introductions and the most up-to-date scholarship Clear, modernized spelling and punctuation, enabling contemporary readers to understand the Elizabethan English Completely updated, detailed bibliographies and performance histories An interpretive essay on film adaptations of the play, along with an extensive filmography [via]

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  • Madame Bovary
    by Gustave Flaubert
    ISBN 0553213415 (0-553-21341-5)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    This exquisite novel tells the story of one of the most compelling heroines in modern literature--Emma Bovary. Unhappily married to a devoted, clumsy provincial doctor, Emma revolts against the ordinariness of her life by pursuing voluptuous dreams of ecstasy and love. But her sensuous and sentimental desires lead her only to suffering corruption and downfall. A brilliant psychological portrait, Madame Bovary searingly depicts the human mind in search of transcendence. Who is Madame Bovary? Flaubert's answer to this question was superb: "Madame Bovary, c'est moi." Acclaimed as a masterpiece upon its publication in 1857, the work catapulted Flaubert to the ranks of the world's greatest novelists. This volume, with its fine translation by Lowell Bair, a perceptive introduction by Leo Bersani, and a complete supplement of essays and critical comments, is the indispensable Madame Bovary. [via]

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  • Mansfield Park
    by Jane Austen
    ISBN 0553212761 (0-553-21276-1)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    Though Jane Austen was writing at a time when Gothic potboilers such as Ann Ward Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto were all the rage, she never got carried away by romance in her own novels. In Austen's ordered world, the passions that ruled Gothic fiction would be horridly out of place; marriage was, first and foremost, a contract, the bedrock of polite society. Certain rules applied to who was eligible and who was not, how one courted and married and what one expected afterwards. To flout these rules was to tear at the basic fabric of society, and the consequences could be terrible. Each of the six novels she completed in her lifetime are, in effect, comic cautionary tales that end happily for those characters who play by the rules and badly for those who don't. In Mansfield Park, for example, Austen gives us Fanny Price, a poor young woman who has grown up in her wealthy relatives' household without ever being accepted as an equal. The only one who has truly been kind to Fanny is Edmund Bertram, the younger of the family's two sons.

    Into this Cinderella existence comes Henry Crawford and his sister, Mary, who are visiting relatives in the neighborhood. Soon Mansfield Park is given over to all kinds of gaiety, including a daring interlude spent dabbling in theatricals. Young Edmund is smitten with Mary, and Henry Crawford woos Fanny. Yet these two charming, gifted, and attractive siblings gradually reveal themselves to be lacking in one essential Austenian quality: principle. Without good principles to temper passion, the results can be disastrous, and indeed, Mansfield Park is rife with adultery, betrayal, social ruin, and ruptured friendships. But this is a comedy, after all, so there is also a requisite happy ending and plenty of Austen's patented gentle satire along the way. Describing the switch in Edmund's affections from Mary to Fanny, she writes: "I purposely abstain from dates on this occasion, that everyone may be at liberty to fix their own, aware that the cure of unconquerable passions, and the transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary much as to time in different people." What does not vary is the pleasure with which new generations come to Jane Austen. --Alix Wilber [via]

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  • Medicine for Melancholy
    by Ray Bradbury
    ISBN 0553204262 (0-553-20426-2)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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  • Lessing, Doris May: The Memoirs of a Survivor
    The Memoirs of a Survivor
    by Doris May Lessing
    ISBN 055322817X (0-553-22817-X)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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  • The Merchant of Venice
    by William Shakespeare, David Bevington
    ISBN 0553212990 (0-553-21299-0)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    "Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?" Shylock's impassioned plea in the middle of The Merchant of Venice is one of its most dramatic moments. After the Holocaust, the play has become a battleground for those who argue that the play represents Shakespeare's ultimate statement against ignorance and anti-Semitism in favour of a liberal vision of tolerance and multiculturalism. Other critics have pointed out that the play is, after all, a comedy that ultimately pokes fun at a 16th-century Jew. In fact, the bare outline of the plot suggests that the play is far more complex than either of these characterisations. Bassanio, a feckless young Venetian, asks his wealthy friend, the merchant Antonio, for money to finance a trip to woo the beautiful Portia in Belmont. Reluctant to refuse his friend (to whom he professes intense love), Antonio borrows the money from the Jewish moneylender. If he reneges on the deal, Shylock jokingly demands a pound of his flesh. When all Antonio's ships are lost at sea, Shylock calls in his debt, and the love and laughter of the first scenes of the play threaten to give way to death and tragedy. The final climactic courtroom scene, complete with a cross-dressed Portia, a knife-wielding Shylock, and the debate on "the quality of mercy" is one of the great dramatic moments in Shakespeare. The controversial subject matter of the play ensures that it continues to repel, divide but also fascinate its many audiences. --Jerry Brotton [via]

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  • Verne, Jules: Mysterious Island
    Mysterious Island
    by Jules Verne, Lowell Bair
    ISBN 0553214349 (0-553-21434-9)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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  • Night
    by Elie Wiesel
    ISBN 0553208071 (0-553-20807-1)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel's wrenching attempt to find meaning in the horror of the Holocaust is technically a novel, but it's based so closely on his own experiences in Birkenau, Auschwitz, and Buchenwald that it's generally--and not inaccurately--read as an autobiography. Like Wiesel himself, the protagonist of Night is a scholarly, pious teenager racked with guilt at having survived the genocidal campaign that consumed his family. His memories of the nightmare world of the death camps present him with an intolerable question: how can the God he once so fervently believed in have allowed these monstrous events to occur? There are no easy answers in this harrowing book, which probes life's essential riddles with the lucid anguish only great literature achieves. It marks the crucial first step in Wiesel's lifelong project to bear witness for those who died. [via]

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  • The Odyssey of Homer
    by Homer, Allen Mandelbaum
    ISBN 0553213997 (0-553-21399-7)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    Homer's epic chronicle of the Greek hero Odysseus' journey home from the Trojan War has inspired  writers from Virgil to James Joyce. Odysseus  survives storm and shipwreck, the cave of the Cyclops  and the isle of Circe, the lure of the Sirens' song  and a trip to the Underworld, only to find his  most difficult challenge at home, where treacherous  suitors seek to steal his kingdom and his loyal  wife, Penelope. Favorite of the gods, Odysseus  embodies the energy, intellect, and resourcefulness  that were of highest value to the ancients and that  remain ideals in out time.In this  new verse translation, Allen  Mandelbaum--celebrated poet and translator of Virgil's  Aeneid and Dante's Divine Comedy  --realizes the power and beauty of the original  Greek verse and demonstrates why the epic tale of  The Odyssey has captured the human  imagination for nearly three thousand  years. [via]

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  • Of Human Bondage
    by W. Somerset Maugham
    ISBN 055321392X (0-553-21392-X)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    A young man struggling for self-realization is caught up in a destructive love affair. [via]

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  • On Aggression
    by Konrad Lorenz
    ISBN 0553145576 (0-553-14557-6)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    First published in the 1960s, On Aggression has been the target of criticism and controversy ever since. It is not Lorenz's careful descriptions of animal behaviour that are contentious, but his extrapolations to the human world that have caused reverberations resulting in a statement adopted by UNESCO in 1989 and subsequently endorsed by the American Psychological Association that appears to condemn his work. But does On Aggression actually make the claims implicit in the Seville statement?
    In a new introduction by Professor Eric Salzen, the debate about Lorenz's work is set in its social and political context and his claims and those of his critics reassessed. Human aggression has not lessened since this seminal work first appeared and there are no convincing new solutions. On Aggression should be read by all new students and re-read by more experienced scholars so that the important evidence he presents from ethnology may be reappraised in the light of the most recent research. [via]

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  • One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich
    by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
    ISBN 0553247778 (0-553-24777-8)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    Solzhenitsyn's first book, this economical, relentless novel is one of the most forceful artistic indictments of political oppression in the Stalin-era Soviet Union. The simply told story of a typical, grueling day of the titular character's life in a labor camp in Siberia, is a modern classic of Russian literature and quickly cemented Solzhenitsyn's international reputation upon publication in 1962. It is painfully apparent that Solzhenitsyn himself spent time in the gulags--he was imprisoned for nearly a decade as punishment for making derogatory statements about Stalin in a letter to a friend. [via]

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  • The Origin of Species: Library Edition
    by Charles Robert Darwin
    ISBN 0553214632 (0-553-21463-2)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    It's hard to talk about The Origin of Species without making statements that seem overwrought and fulsome. But it's true: this is indeed one of the most important and influential books ever written, and it is one of the very few groundbreaking works of science that is truly readable.

    To a certain extent it suffers from the Hamlet problem--it's full of clichés! Or what are now clichés, but which Darwin was the first to pen. Natural selection, variation, the struggle for existence, survival of the fittest: it's all in here.

    Darwin's friend and "bulldog" T.H. Huxley said upon reading the Origin, "How extremely stupid of me not to have thought of that." Alfred Russel Wallace had thought of the same theory of evolution Darwin did, but it was Darwin who gathered the mass of supporting evidence--on domestic animals and plants, on variability, on sexual selection, on dispersal--that swept most scientists before it. It's hardly necessary to mention that the book is still controversial: Darwin's remark in his conclusion that "Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history" is surely the pinnacle of British understatement. --Mary Ellen Curtin [via]

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  • Othello
    by William Shakespeare, David M. Bevington, David Scott Kastan
    ISBN 0553213024 (0-553-21302-4)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    Though this great tragedy of unsurpassed intensity and emotion is played out against Renaissance splendor, its story of the doomed marriage of a Venetian senator's daughter, Desdemona, to a Moorish general, Othello, is especially relevant to modern audiences. The differences in race and background create an initial tension that allows the horrifyingly envious villain Iago methodically to promote the "green-eyed monster" jealousy, until, in one of the most deeply moving scenes in theatrical history, the noble Moor destroys the woman he loves-only to discover too late that she was innocent. Each Edition Includes: Comprehensive explanatory notes Vivid introductions and the most up-to-date scholarship Clear, modernized spelling and punctuation, enabling contemporary readers to understand the Elizabethan English Completely updated, detailed bibliographies and performance histories An interpretive essay on film adaptations of the play, along with an extensive filmography [via]

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  • Dickens, Charles: Our Mutual Friend
    Our Mutual Friend
    by Charles Dickens
    ISBN 0553213865 (0-553-21386-5)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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  • The Peter Principle
    by Raymond Hull, Peter, Laurence & Hull, Raymond
    ISBN 0553244159 (0-553-24415-9)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    This book caused a storm when first published in 1969, battering up the bestseller list to #1, charming readers from Topeka to Timbuktu, and finally, brilliantly, blessedly giving the world an answer to a question that nags us all: Why is incompetence so maddeningly rampant and so vexingly triumphant? The book and the phrase it defined are now considered comedic-yet-classic cornerstones of organizational thought, and in honor of the book's fortieth anniversary, Robert I. Sutton has written a foreword introducing the book to a new generation of readers.

    The Peter Principle, the eponymous law Laurence Peter coined, explains that "in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence." Everyonefrom the office intern to the CEO, from the low-level civil servant to a nation's presidentwill inevitably rise to his or her level of incompetence, if it hasn't happened already. Dr. Peter's glorious revelation explains why incompetence is at the root of everything we endeavor to dowhy schools bestow ignorance, why governments condone anarchy, why courts dispense injustice, why prosperity causes unhappiness, and why utopian plans never generate utopias.

    With the wit of James Thurber or Mark Twain, the psychological and anthropological acuity of Sigmund Freud or Margaret Mead, and the theoretical impact of Isaac Newton or Copernicus, Dr. Laurence Peter and Raymond Hull's brilliant book explains how incompetence and its accompanying symptoms, syndromes, and remedies define the world and the work we do in it.

    [via]

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  • The Pickwick Papers
    by Charles Dickens
    ISBN 0553211234 (0-553-21123-4)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    The high-spirited work of a young Dickens, The Pickwick Papers is the remarkable first novel that made its author famous and that has remained one of the best-known books in the world. In it the inimitable Samuel Pickwick, his well-fed body and unsinkable good spirits clad in tights and gaiters, sallies forth through the noisy streets of London and into the colorful country inns of rural England for a series of sparkling encounters with love and misadventure. From the wit of cockney bootblack Sam Weller to the unforgettable Fat Boy and rascals like the amorous Mr. Jingle and the unscrupulous lawyers Dodson and Fogg, The Pickwick Papers reels with joyous fantasy, infectious good humor, and a touch of the macabrea classic work that G. K. Chesterton called the great example of everything that made Dickens great&[a] supreme masterpiece. [via]

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  • The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings by Oscar Wilde
    by Oscar Wilde
    ISBN 0553212540 (0-553-21254-0)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    A lush, cautionary tale of a life of vileness and deception or a loving portrait of the aesthetic impulse run rampant? Why not both? After Basil Hallward paints a beautiful, young man's portrait, his subject's frivolous wish that the picture change and he remain the same comes true. Dorian Gray's picture grows aged and corrupt while he continues to appear fresh and innocent. After he kills a young woman, "as surely as if I had cut her little throat with a knife," Dorian Gray is surprised to find no difference in his vision or surroundings. "The roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing just as happily in my garden."

    As Hallward tries to make sense of his creation, his epigram-happy friend Lord Henry Wotton encourages Dorian in his sensual quest with any number of Wildean paradoxes, including the delightful "When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy." But despite its many languorous pleasures, The Picture of Dorian Gray is an imperfect work. Compared to the two (voyeuristic) older men, Dorian is a bore, and his search for ever new sensations far less fun than the novel's drawing-room discussions. Even more oddly, the moral message of the novel contradicts many of Wilde's supposed aims, not least "no artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style." Nonetheless, the glamour boy gets his just deserts. And Wilde, defending Dorian Gray, had it both ways: "All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment." [via]

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  • A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man
    by James Joyce
    ISBN 0553214047 (0-553-21404-7)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    Perhaps Joyce's most personal work, A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man depicts the intellectual awakening of one of literature's most memorable young heroes, Stephen Dedalus.  Through a series of brilliant epiphanies that parallel the development of his own aesthetic consciousness, Joyce evokes Stephen's youth, from his impressionable years as the youngest student at the Clongowed Wood school to the deep religious conflict he experiences at a day school in Dublin, and finally to his college studies where he challenges the conventions of his upbringing and his understanding of faith and intellectual freedom.  James Joyce's highly autobiographical novel was first published in the United States in 1916 to immediate acclaim.  Ezra Pound accurately predicted that Joyce's book would "remain a permanent part of English literature," while H.G. Wells dubbed it "by far the most important living and convincing picture that exists of an Irish Catholic upbringing."  A remarkably rich study of a developing young mind, A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man made an indelible mark on literature and confirmed Joyce's reputation as one of the world's greatest and lasting writers. [via]

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  • Pride and Prejudice
    by Jane Austen
    ISBN 0553213105 (0-553-21310-5)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    For over 150 years, Pride And Prejudice has remained one of the most popular novels in the English language. Jane Austen herself called this brilliant work her "own darling child." Pride And Prejudice , the story of Mrs. Bennet's attempts to marry off her five daughters is one of the best-loved and most enduring classics in English literature. Excitement fizzes through the Bennet household at Longbourn in Hertfordshire when young, eligible Mr. Charles Bingley rents the fine house nearby. He may have sisters, but he also has male friends, and one of these-the haughty, and even wealthier, Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy-irks the vivacious Elizabeth Bennet, the second of the Bennet girls. She annoys him. Which is how we know they must one day marry. The romantic clash between the opinionated Elizabeth and Darcy is a splendid rendition of civilized sparring. As the characters dance a delicate quadrille of flirtation and intrigue, Jane Austen's radiantly caustic wit and keen observation sparkle. [via]

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  • The Prince and the Pauper
    by Mark Twain
    ISBN 0553212567 (0-553-21256-7)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Rich with surprise and hilarious adventure, The Prince and the Pauper is a delightful satire of Englands romantic past and a joyful boyhood romp filled with the same tongue-in-cheek irony that sparks the best of Mark Twains tall tales. Two boys, one an urchin from Londons filthy lanes, the other a prince born in a lavish palace, unwittingly trade identities. Thus a bedraggled Prince of Poverty discovers that his private dreams have all come truewhile a pampered Prince of Wales finds himself tossed into a rough-and-tumble world of squalid beggars and villainous thieves. Originally written as a story for children, The Prince and the Pauper is a classic novel for adults as wellthrough its stinging attack on the ageless human folly of attempting to measure true worth by outer appearances. [via]

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  • Pursuit
    by Ludovic Kennedy
    ISBN 0553237950 (0-553-23795-0)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    In May 1941, the German battleship Bismark, then the most formidable fighting ship afloat, escaped into the Atlantic, posing a terrible threat to the convoys that kept Britain supplied. This book gives a first hand account of the pursuit and sinking of the Bismark. [via]

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  • Riding Shotgun
    by Rita Mae Brown
    ISBN 0553096052 (0-553-09605-2)
    Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group

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    Book summary:

    Horrified when her beloved husband dies while making love to her sister, Cig Blackwood ventures into the woods and emerges in 1699, a period that she grows to love before she is harshly returned to the present. 60,000 first printing. $60,000 ad/promo. [via]

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  • Robinson Crusoe
    by Daniel Defoe
    ISBN 0553213733 (0-553-21373-3)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Daniel Defoe This classic story of a shipwrecked mariner on a deserted island is perhaps the greatest adventure in all of English literature. Fleeing from pirates, Robinson Crusoe is swept ashore in a storm, possessing only a knife, a box of tobacco, a pipe- and the will to survive. His is the saga of a man alone: a man who overcomes self-pity and despair to reconstruct his life; who painstakingly teaches himself how to fashion a pot, bake bread, build a canoe; and who, after twenty-four agonizing years of solitude, discovers a human footprint in the sand... [via]

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  • The Screwtape Letters
    by C. S. Lewis
    ISBN 0553214438 (0-553-21443-8)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    This adaptation of C.S. Lewis's biting satire received a 1999 Grammy nomination for best spoken-word performance, and it's easy to see why--the story fits the format perfectly. It's relatively brief (the unabridged reading takes a mere four hours), and contains only one character--the demon Screwtape, who writes letters to his novice nephew Wormwood, instructing him on how to best tempt his "patient" (a wayward soul on earth) into the bosom of "our Lord below."

    Obviously, the book wasn't written with former Monty Python John Cleese in mind, but it's hard to imagine a better Screwtape. Cleese's voice provides the perfect vehicle for Lewis's dry, razor-edged wit. His uncanny comic timing and ability to milk each phrase for maximum effect betray an infectious enthusiasm for the story. It's clear that he's having a great time reading, and it's impossible not to laugh along with him. This inspired pairing of two of the 20th century's greatest wits makes for a meditation on the dark side of spiritual guidance that's as relevant and funny today as it was in Lewis's war-torn England. (Running time: 4 hours, 3 cassettes) --Andrew Neiland [via]

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  • Garrett: The Search for Ka
    The Search for Ka
    by Garrett, Vicki Ann Heydron
    ISBN 0553241206 (0-553-24120-6)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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  • Weis, Margaret: The Serpent Image
    The Serpent Image
    by Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman
    ISBN 0553083104 (0-553-08310-4)
    Hardcover, Bantam Books

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  • The Seventh Gate
    by Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman
    ISBN 0553096478 (0-553-09647-8)
    Hardcover, Bantam Books

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    The conclusion to the Death Gate Cycle finds Alfred in the Labyrinth of a fearsome dragon, Haplo on the verge of death, and Marit resolving to lead the band into the dreaded Seventh Gate to confront old and new enemies. 55,000 first printing. $55,000 ad/promo. [via]

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  • Sherlock Holmes: A Baker Street Dozen
    by Arthur Conan Doyle
    ISBN 0553212419 (0-553-21241-9)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    Sherlock Holmes
    The Complete Novels and Stories

    Volume I

    Since his first appearance in Beetons Christmas Annual in 1887, Sir Arthur Conan Doyles Sherlock Holmes has been one of the most beloved fictional characters ever created. Now, in two paperback volumes, Bantam presents all fifty-six short stories and four novels featuring Conan Doyles classic hero--a truly complete collection of Sherlock Holmess adventures in crime!

    Volume I includes the early novel A Study in Scarlet, which introduced the eccentric genius of Sherlock Holmes to the world. This baffling murder mystery, with the cryptic word Rache written in blood, first brought Holmes together with Dr. John Watson. Next, The Sign of Four presents Holmess famous seven percent solution and the strange puzzle of Mary Morstan in the quintessential locked-room mystery.

    Also included are Holmess feats of extraordinary detection in such famous cases as the chilling  The Adventure of the Speckled Band, the baffling riddle of The Musgrave Ritual, and the ingeniously plotted The Five Orange Pips, tales that bring to life a Victorian England of horse-drawn cabs, fogs, and the famous lodgings at 221B Baker Street, where Sherlock Holmes earned his undisputed reputation as the greatest fictional detective of all time. [via]

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  • Forester, Cecil S.: Sink the Bismarck
    Sink the Bismarck
    by Cecil S. Forester
    ISBN 0553133519 (0-553-13351-9)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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  • Stephenson, Neal: Snow Crash
    Snow Crash
    by Neal Stephenson
    ISBN 055308853X (0-553-08853-X)
    Hardcover, Bantam Books

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  • The Swiss Family Robinson
    by J.D. Wyss
    ISBN 0553214039 (0-553-21403-9)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    For many days we had been tempest-tossed&the raging storm increased in fury until on the seventh day all hope was lost.

    From these dire opening lines, a timeless story of adventure begins. One family will emerge alive from this terrible storm: the Robinsonsa Swiss pastor, his wife, and four sons, plus two dogs and a shipload of livestock. Inspired by Daniel Defoes Robinson Crusoe, this heartwarming tale portrays a familys struggle to create a new life on a strange and fantastic tropical island. There each boy must learn to utilize his own unique nature as their adventures lead to difficult challenges and amazing discoveries, including a puzzling message tied to an albatrosss leg. But it is in the ingenuity and authenticity of the family itself, and the natural wonders of this exotic land that have made The Swiss Family Robinson, first published at the beginning of the nineteenth century, one of the most enduring and imitated stories of shipwreck and survival. [via]

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  • The Taming of the Shrew
    by William Shakespeare, David M. Bevington, David Scott Kastan
    ISBN 0553213067 (0-553-21306-7)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    One of the most controversial and problematic of all of Shakespeare's plays, The Taming of the Shrew is a typical Elizabethan domestic comedy written around 1592. Petruchio, a gentleman of Verona, arrives in Padua and announces to his friends that "I come to wive it wealthily in Padua; / If wealthily, then happily in Padua". He soon finds that a group of men keen to marry Bianca, the younger daughter of rich old Baptista, are frustrated by her elder, "shrewish" sister, Katherine. There is much subsequent hilarity as Bianca's suitors make a bet with Petruchio that he cannot "tame" and marry Katherine. Despite Katherine's protestations, Petruchio goes ahead with the match, using deliberately unorthodox behaviour to confuse Katherine (including a scene where he starves her), claiming that "this is the way to kill a wife with kindness". The play culminates with a scene of Katherine's apparently spontaneous subjection to her husband's will, where she places her hand beneath her husband's foot, and tells the other wives present that "thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper". The play's gratuitous scenes of women being abused and vilified in the name of "comedy" has made many directors and critics very uncomfortable with the play, and many feminist critics have condemned contemporary productions of the play as reproducing certain 16th-century stereotypes concerning women who speak out against male authority. --Jerry Brotton [via]

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  • The Tempest
    by William Shakespeare, David M. Bevington
    ISBN 0553213075 (0-553-21307-5)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    One of Shakespeare's most famous but also enigmatic plays, for many years the story of Prospero's exile from his native Milan, and life with his daughter Miranda on an unnamed island in the Mediterranean, was seen as an autobiographical dramatisation of Shakespeare's departure from the London stage. The Epilogue, spoken by Prospero, claims that "now my charms are all o'erthrown", appeared to reflect Shakespeare's own renunciation of his magical dramatic powers as he retired to Stratford. But The Tempest is far more than this, as recent commentators have pointed out. The dramatic action observes the classical unities of time, place and action, as Prospero uses his "rough magic" to lure his wicked usurping brother, Antonio, and King Alonso of Naples to his island retreat to torment them before engineering his return to Milan.

    However, the play is full of extraordinary anomalies and fantastic interludes, including Gonzalo's fantasy of a utopian commonwealth, Prospero's magical servant Ariel, and the "poisonous slave" Caliban. The creation of Caliban has particularly fascinated critics, who have noticed in his creation a colonial dimension to the play. In this respect Caliban can be seen as an American Indian or African slave, who articulates a particularly powerful strain of anti-colonial sentiment, telling Prospero that "this island's mine, by Sycorax my mother,/ Which thou tak'st from me". This has led to an intense reassessment of the play from a post-colonial perspective, as critics and historians have debated the extent to which the play endorses or criticises early English colonial expansion. --Jerry Brotton [via]

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  • Foster, Alan Dean: The Thing
    The Thing
    by Alan Dean Foster
    ISBN 0553204777 (0-553-20477-7)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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  • Silverberg: Thorns
    Thorns
    by Silverberg
    ISBN 0553235737 (0-553-23573-7)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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  • Dumas, Alexandre: The Three Musketeers
    The Three Musketeers
    by Alexandre Dumas
    ISBN 0553212176 (0-553-21217-6)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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  • The Three Musketeers: Being the First of the D'artagnan Romances; and Twenty Years After, a Sequel
    by Alexandre Dumas
    ISBN 0553213377 (0-553-21337-7)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    Product Details Paperback Publisher: Bantam Classics (1984) Language: English ISBN-10: 0553213377 ISBN-13: 978-0553213379 ASIN: B006U1RHYA Product Dimensions: 1.1 x 4.2 x 6.9 inches Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces [via]

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  • Time Machine
    by H. G. Wells
    ISBN 0553213512 (0-553-21351-2)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    When the Time Traveller courageously stepped out of his machine for the first time, he found himself in the year 802,700--and everything has changed.  In another, more utopian age, creatures seemed to dwell together in perfect harmony.  The Time Traveller thought he could study these marvelous beings--unearth their secret and then retum to his own time--until he discovered that his invention, his only avenue of escape, had been stolen.  H.G. Well's famous novel of one man's astonishing journey beyond the conventional limits of the imagination first appeared in 1895.  It won him immediate recognition, and has been regarded ever since as one of the great masterpieces in the literature of science fiction. [via]

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  • To Say Nothing of the Dog
    by Connie Willis
    ISBN 0553099957 (0-553-09995-7)
    Hardcover, Bantam Books

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    To Say Nothing of the Dog is a science-fiction fantasy in the guise of an old-fashioned Victorian novel, complete with epigraphs, brief outlines, and a rather ugly boxer in three-quarters profile at the start of each chapter. Or is it a Victorian novel in the guise of a time-traveling tale, or a highly comic romp, or a great, allusive literary game, complete with spry references to Dorothy L. Sayers, Wilkie Collins, and Arthur Conan Doyle? Its title is the subtitle of Jerome K. Jerome's singular, and hilarious, Three Men in a Boat. In one scene the hero, Ned Henry, and his friends come upon Jerome, two men, and the dog Montmorency in--you guessed it--a boat. Jerome will later immortalize Ned's fumbling. (Or, more accurately, Jerome will earlier immortalize Ned's fumbling, because Ned is from the 21st century and Jerome from the 19th.)

    What Connie Willis soon makes clear is that genre can go to the dogs. To Say Nothing of the Dog is a fine, and fun, romance--an amused examination of conceptions and misconceptions about other eras, other people. When we first meet Ned, in 1940, he and five other time jumpers are searching bombed-out Coventry Cathedral for the bishop's bird stump, an object about which neither he nor the reader will be clear for hundreds of pages. All he knows is that if they don't find it, the powerful Lady Schrapnell will keep sending them back in time, again and again and again. Once he's been whisked through the rather quaint Net back to the Oxford future, Ned is in a state of super time-lag. (Willis is happily unconcerned with futuristic vraisemblance, though Ned makes some obligatory references to "vids," "interactives," and "headrigs.") The only way Ned can get the necessary two weeks' R and R is to perform one more drop and recuperate in the past, away from Lady Schrapnell. Once he returns something to someone (he's too exhausted to understand what or to whom) on June 7, 1888, he's free.

    Willis is concerned, however, as is her confused character, with getting Victoriana right, and Ned makes a good amateur anthropologist--entering one crowded room, he realizes that "the reason Victorian society was so restricted and repressed was that it was impossible to move without knocking something over." Though he's still not sure what he's supposed to bring back, various of his confederates keep popping back to set him to rights. To Say Nothing of the Dog is a shaggy-dog tale complete with a preternaturally quiet, time-traveling cat, Princess Arjumand, who might well be the cause of some serious temporal incongruities--for even a mouser might change the course of European history. In the end, readers might well be more interested in Ned's romance with a fellow historian than in the bishop's bird stump, and who will not rejoice in their first Net kiss, which lasts 169 years! [via]

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  • The Tragedy of Julius Caesar
    by William Shakespeare, David M. Bevington
    ISBN 0553212966 (0-553-21296-6)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    One of Shakespeare's most political plays, Julius Caesar continued Shakespeare's interest in Roman history, first developed in Titus Andronicus. Drawing on Plutarch, the great historian of Rome, Shakespeare dramatises one of the most crucial moments in Roman history--the assassination of Julius Caesar. Loved by the Roman crowd but increasingly feared by the Senators, Caesar increasingly shows signs of his desire to abolish the Republic and crown himself emperor. A conspiracy is hatched, led by Cassius and Brutus, who murder Caesar on the steps of the Capitol. Mourning over his dead friend's body, Mark Antony gives one of the famous rhetorical speeches in literature, asking "Friends, Romans, Countrymen" to lament Caesar's death, privately vowing to "let slip the dogs of war" against those who have shed Caesar's blood. Antony joins forces with Caesar's son Octavius to defeat Cassius and Brutus in battle, and establish an uneasy alliance whose collapse is dramatised in Shakespeare's later play Antony and Cleopatra. Written at the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign, Julius Caesar has been seen by many as a radically pro-Republican play which sailed close to the political wind of the time. --Jerry Brotton [via]

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  • Treasure Island
    by Robert Louis Stevenson
    ISBN 0553212494 (0-553-21249-4)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Climb aboard for the swashbuckling adventure of a lifetime. Treasure Islandhas enthralled (and caused slight seasickness) for decades. The names Long John Silver and Jim Hawkins are destined to remain pieces of folklore for as long as children want to read Robert Louis Stevenson's most famous book. With it's dastardly plot and motley crew of rogues and villains, it seems unlikely that children will ever say no to this timeless classic. --Naomi Gesinger [via]

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  • Twelfth Night; Or, What You Will
    by William Shakespeare
    ISBN 0553213083 (0-553-21308-3)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    One of Shakespeare's finest comedies, Twelfth Night was written at the same time as Hamlet and Troilus and Cressida, and whilst it shares their fascination with sex, death and confused identities, its exuberant comedy and linguistic inventiveness rises above the introspection of these plays. Viola and her twin brother Sebastian are separated in a storm, which washes them both up at different points on the shores of Illyria. Believing each other to be dead, both attempt to survive by using their wits. Viola cross-dresses and enters the service of the lovesick Orsino, in love with Olivia, an heiress in mourning for the loss of her brother. Orsino's saucy young page Cesario (Viola) soon falls in love with "his" master, who tells "him", "all is semblative a woman's part". Unfortunately, whilst Viola falls in love with Orsino, Olivia falls in love with her alter ego, Cesario, whilst also being pursued at the same time by her pompous servant Malvolio. Olivia's house is also turned upside down by the antics of her drunken uncle, Sir Toby Belch, and the whole crazy situation reaches boiling point when Sebastian reappears.

    Despite the madcap plot, Twelfth Night remains one of Shakespeare's most complex and inventive comedies, fascinated with questions of cross-dressing, gender confusion, language and inversion, as well as retaining a darker edge to some of its laughter. --Jerry Brotton [via]

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  • Silverberg, Robert: Valentine Pontifex
    Valentine Pontifex
    by Robert Silverberg
    ISBN 0553244949 (0-553-24494-9)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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  • The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More
    by Roald Dahl
    ISBN 0553154451 (0-553-15445-1)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    This collection of stories includes "The Boy Who Talked With Animals", "The Hitch-hiker", "The Mildenhall Treasure", "The Swan", "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar", "Lucky Break" and "A Piece of Cake". [via]

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